Appropriate Architecture for Africa [Aᵌ] aims to promote the idea that the architectural profession has the potential to offer both technical and social expertise towards the achievement of sustainable, human(e), equitable, beautiful and functional buildings, neighbourhoods and cities.

A think-tank was initiated in collaboration with the Industrial Design, Department of Mechanical Engineering. The result is the TUT|Tharabololo conversations, aiming to promote design for social innovation, generating useful design knowledge and creating meaningful social changes through design research, teaching and practice. We aim to establish long term partnerships with proximate communities and to gear our teaching programmes towards design problems that address the socio-economic conditions of the contexts we practice in, while also being aligned with global approaches in social innovation. We are partnering nationally and internationally to achieve these aims. The collaborative projects include an Italy/South African Joint Research Programme 2018: A social and spatial investigation at the Moxomatsi village, Mpumalangy (SSIMM) as well as the Bertrams Community Project with the Housing and Urban Environments Research field (H_UE), the Centre for Applied Research and Innovation in the Built Environment, CARINBE (both located at the University of Johannesburg) as well as other partners.

In addition to this important initiative, the niche area includes several projects and research focus areas led by a number of people at the Department of Architecture. A brief overview is presented below:

1. THE URBAN [LAB]ORATORY believes all people, above all other considerations, are at the centre of architectural and urban design principles. The UrbanLab seeks to interrogate the way in which we think about urbanism in our city, country and other cities of the Global South.